#advanced women

[thesarahshay]

Thinking about her (the 9-year-old girl from Gaudy Night who says "I don't want a husband, I'd rather have a motorcycle").

[samkerrworshipper]

the lawn is dead

it’s suicide awareness month and i want to emphasise the importance of reaching out. you are loved. there are options. you will be missed. suicide is a permanent solution to temporary problems. you can get better. you are not a lost cause. talk to somebody.

warnings: reader discretion advised. heavy suicide, self harm, depression themes

There was an overall assumption that all children were born innocent.

Not you.

You swore that when you were born, a coin was flipped, and it landed on the complete wrong side.

Sometimes you felt like your brain and body were disconnected, that everything inside of you worked separately, like you were a sewed together body on the inside, a internal frankenstein.

It was tough feeling like you didn’t belong in your own boyd, but it was even harder when you knew that you were an imposter inside.

It was ironic, that you had imposter syndrome, and yet there was nothing wrong with your life.

There had been.

Had. No longer. Past tense.

You’re supposed to be happy, you suppose. You have the world at your feet, you have the life everybody wants, the world is your oyster.

It doesn’t matter how many times you rotate those thoughts through your split up brain, it never sinks in, because there is a deeply onset belief inside of you that can’t deny the dishonesty behind the words.

You should be happy, you should be utilising the gifts you’ve been given, you should be appreciating the life you have, and yet all of it just feels like a big ball of tangled up yarn, a clump of knots and mess that makes no sense.

You’re not allowed to feel numb, so you try and pinpoint what it is that you are feeling.

Are is too hard, so you start with aren’t.

You aren’t mad, you aren’t sad or it doesn’t feel like normal sadness, you’re definitely not happy, not scared, are not anxious, it feels like nothingness.

Yet nothingness doesn’t feel so all consuming, nothingness is lying in bed down in bed and doomscrolling until somehow 8 hours have passed and you’ve wasted a whole day and don’t find yourself caring. Nothingness is sitting down in the shower and covering your ears with your hands and finding solace in the intense rain noises. Nothingness is driving until you forget where you were supposed to be going and have autopiloted your way to the opposite side of town somehow. Nothingness is being so obsolete of your own body that everything is a fog, nothing makes sense, you’re devoid of all emotions and all the discombobulated sections of your body.

If anything, this is everythingness, this is all the feelings in the world beating down across your skin. You’re itching with agitation, itching with everything in your life and yet none of it penetrates the surface beyond the rotor of thoughts that continue to circulate like the blood in your veins.

It’s like your sitting inside a plastic bubble, and every variable is crashing down against the plastic. It’s all there, it’s crashing down, but it doesn’t touch you, it doesn’t penetrate, there is just a constant reminder that it’s all there. If you try to break out of the bubble you’re forced to face it, but you feel like you’re suffocating and the bubble is slowly depriving you of oxygen.

A part of you wouldn’t mind for it to suck the life out of you.

Sometimes it’s inevitable, letting the thoughts in your brain win, or syncing the truth out so much that it all distorts into a messy mixture of non-emotions that are more hurtful then helpful.

You’re in a weird funk, that’s hwat you keep telling yourself. With injuries and off-season and change of seasons. You tell yourself that it’s unescapable, that there aren’t any ways to escape the deadly habit that is you’re self-inflicted brain rotting and slowly decomposing.

There are outlets, there are options, but in it;s current state you’re brain denounces them all.

Occasionally, you’re brain falls into the same death trap that it was conditioned into as a child. Survival was solely your own responsisbility, there was no leaning, no relying, just yourself and your own strategies that occasionally kept you functioning.

Most of the time you were fine, most of the time you were able to isolate the darkest, disconnected fragments of your body but not all the time.

Sometimes you don’t though.

Every so often, you suffocate yourself, intentionally or unintentionally isn’t always clear, sometimes you’re so lacking on oxygen and everything that makes survival a possibility that you just stop. Those times, when you stop, when you fall, when you plummet. It’s when you drop into the death pit of unthinkable thoughts.

It’s when you get to the part of your brain that you wish had never been stitched up with all the others.

You try and avoid it, if you work hard on a normal day then you can normally disconnect it from the functioning parts that you rely on, but occasionally, when you’re left to fend for yourself that one part that’s normally off, lights up like a christmas tree.

It flashes bright red, like a alarm in the deepest parts of your brain, and it won’t stop flashing until you do something about it.

You’ve got coping mechanisms that you’ve developed over the years, running, football, eating, cooking, reading, sleeping, sex. None of it has even begun to strike the surface, normally your best bet was sleeping it off, depression, or depressive thoughts always seemed to fade with sunlight, it was the moments in the dark when everything suddenly felt… heavier.

You hadn’t been able to sleep since you’d gotten injured, everything was harder when you had so much weight on your back. Weight to recover, weight to get stronger, weight to be the same on the pitch.

It was a minor injury, some grief with your ankle ligaments that weren’t actually injured but also weren’t fixed, it was annoying, and everyday was a drag.

A drag of back and forth recovery and rest that had your mind buzzing from the inside.

It was no secret that you didn’t handle injuries well, you craved the physicality of being a professional athlete, your brain needed the stimulation that it involved. Without it, you struggled, it was clear to everybody around you that you couldn’t function sitting on the sidelines, it had inevitably made you crazy.

You were walking on eggshells, your friends had tried to point it out to you and you’d ignored it up until now.

It was impossible to ignore it at this stage though.

It was all you could think about, the constant pain, the overwhelming brain fuzz, the weight of it all.

Over and over and over and over and over again.

Your hands are shaking, your breaths are staggered, your skin is prickly, your throat is dry, your body is cold and there is a deep set pain in the centre of your stomach that no matter how many times you try and shift it away nothing works.

You’re too deep.

Your whole life, it had always been your biggest wish that the part of you that was broken and threaded together would fix itself, medication made it manageable, therapy made it calmer, but sometimes in life it was impossible to contain the uncontainable. Life was unpredictable, and yet your circumstances were on trend with how your life had been recently.

You should have seen this coming, but a part of you thinks that you did and you’d been content with letting all of these thoughts infiltrate deep in your mind.

Sometimes you look at yourself in the mirror, and you can’t even notice it, it’s like all of the pain and trauma will fall so far from the surface on occasion that you’re foolish enough to believe that maybe it’s all finally gone.

Not now, not at all.

But a part of you wants to make it all gone.

It’s all you can think about, you know how easy it would be, you have it all planned out.

The letters are written, the plan has been made for years, it’s your execution that is lacking.

You aren’t scared, you are more than happy for a big blac cloud of nothingness to come and take you from your life, it would make it all so much easier.

You just need to know that you’ll succeed.

Failure is not an option, in ever single part of your life it hasn’t ever been. But specifically with your life.

If you’re out, you’re out, end of sentence.

There isn’t any recovery, there isn’t any coming back, no psych holds, no hospitals, no treatment, just death. It’s an answer, it’s conclusive. Right now it would solve all of your problems, literally, you could count on every single finger and toe how it would solve the fucked-up puzzle of your life. Normally, there is always something holding you back though. Football had been the main excuse for most times, the headlines would be miserable and all of the fuss and fake-sentiment would be so much worse. Once it had been because you were in love, and that was the best reason. But, like most thing you were unable to keep it alive, and so it died out.

It was all a metaphor for your life, football had been good, until it all slowly self-detonated, love had been good but you were a ticking time bomb of sabotage.

It would be oh so easy.

You knew the tips and tricks, you’d been thinking about it for years. Four long vertical lines, deep enough to need stitches but not deep enough that it would all fade immediately. You wanted to feel the pain, you wanted it all to be a big black and red painful mess, your vision swimming and body giving up because of the pain, not because of the damage you’d done.

It sounded so perfect.

It would be oh so easy, nobody would even notice, it would probably be days before anybody even realised you were gone. You would fade from earth and life like nothing, and nobody would care, and you were happy for it to be that way. You were happy to just disappear, you wanted it all to end.

It’s all hitting that hard, you don’t want help, you don’t want to feel normal, you don’t want treatment, you don’t want meds, you just want to be gone. You normally experience life with so many emotions, too many, but right now, in the bubble of your depression, the only think you feel is a desire to vanish.

There isn’t any hesitation, nothing holding you back as you pick up your poison of choice. It’s always been the same since you were a teenager, you’ve known how you’d go out from the minute it had gone downhill from the very first time. That had been a long time ago now, but not much had changed. Sure, maybe your face had matured a bit, you’re body had changed with being a professional athlete, and you weren’t as self destructive but really when it all boiled down nothing had truly changed.

You were the same broken, lost and alone girl that you had always been.

The same girl hiding in the corner of her bathroom in a pair of sweats that made her body seem so much smaller then it was, a razor blade in one shaky hand and the other hand busy forcing the sleeve of her hoodie up, leaving a easily accessible patch of skin.

It was the same old routine, except this time with a different intention.

You had your scars, you had your invisible marks that nobody could see but you. You were as good at hiding them as you were at your depleting mental health. Over the years you’d learnt how to hurt yourself without leaving permanent marks, you’d learnt how to hide it all from the people closest to you.

Until Alexia.

Love made a person dumb, and being in love with Alexia made you happier then you’d ever experienced and from the moment fireworks had gone off between the two of you, your barriers had fallen down. It had been good, until it hadn’t. Once again, you were left all alone, due to your own self-destructive habits. You couldn’t let yourself be happy, you didn’t know what long term happiness looked like for you and it was terrifying.

It had all been downhill from there, if there was no happiness in the future for you then what was the point? Your life was blowing up, football was the only thing you’d ever lived for and you still had football but football wasn’t for ever, if there was nothing beyond that then what was the point. You didn’t have a education, and whilst you earnt a decent amount off of football, it wasn’t enough to live off of, and now you had nobody else to live for.

Your life, from your perspective, had become pointless.

Whilst you were certain that your behaviour and gone unnoticed, that was far from the truth.

Most of your teammates had picked up on your particularly low mood. You weren’t ever the happiest person in the locker room, one of the more lowkey people who always allowed yourself to fade into the shadows. But that didn’t mean that people didn’t notice you, especially the people who had come to care for you.

You were injured, and that had come to be the main justification for your particularly down moods, but there was also a sneaking suspicion across some of your teammates that something more was wrong, that there was some other kind of cause for the way you dragged yourself around the gym and rooms during your days spent doing rehab.

You looked lifeless, like everything human about you had been drained.

Alexia knew it was something more, in her time with you, she’d learnt about your struggles and just when she thought that you’d started to open up to her, you’d cut it all off. So whilst she didn’t know the extensive history, she knew you had your demons, and that whatever was haunting you this time around wasn’t going to dissapear anytime soon.

Alexia could say that she didn’t care about you anymore, but it would make her a liar.

She’d always hoped that the two of you would make your way back to eachother, that you’re insistence that the two of you weren’t meant to be was overshadowed by the doubt you’d always about the relationship would somehow flip and you’d realise no matter how many issues you had Alexia was prepared to love you through all of them.

But as the time passed from the breakup, you only distanced yourself more. The person that Alexia had tried to bring out shrunk right back into it’s shell. Everyone on the team had been elated to see you find your footing with Alexia, it was the first time in your years at Barca that everyone started to meet you as a person and not just as a footballer. Alexia thought it had meant things were looking up for you, but all good things came to an end.

You’d been appearing like you’d slowly been slipping further down a slope, the bags underneath your eyes getting bigger, your sluggish behaviour getting worse, your determination to do you rehab dwindling and your willingness to interact with any person at the club being completely non-existent.

You were anti-social at the best of times, but completely diverting from all interactions was new for you and Alexia hadn’t been the only one to notice, it was evident to anybody with a brain that something was wrong, Alexia had no idea though just how wrong it all was.

The coincidence of an away Madrid game during the time that it was clear you were tanking was something that Alexia was particularly annoyed by. There was no plausible excuse for her to stay back from the trip, she was the captain, and she was perfectly fit to play. Plus, she had no obligation to you, you’d washed your hands of Alexia months ago and whilst Alexia still felt lingering concern for you she couldn’t justify staying back for what could potentially be nothing.

That didn’t mean though that she was going to just leave you be, not when she was so certain that there was something truly wrong.

Alexia wasn’t exactly sure of the severity of your trauma. She knew that your relationship with your parents was frayed to say the least, that you didn’t talk to them at all anymore and every time Alexia had tried to ask about them she had been met with a cold shoulder. So after a few tries she’d stopped trying, she didn’t know what it was like to have a disconnected family, she couldn’t relate or empathise with your issues and it killed her.

She knew you took medications, she had no idea what, you kept your daily medication closely guarded, but she knew it had something to do with your mental health. She didn’t ask about it, Alexia had been through your shut downs with you, and she knew broaching the subject of your mental health could be so detrimental to your mindset. She let you show her as much as you wanted to, she ignored the scars on your body, ignored the way that she recognised the complete disregard you had for your body. It was clear in every single aspect of your life that you had a little bit less concern then everybody else did. You put your body on the line in football, in ways that made Alexia furious. You didn’t flinch away from pain, if anything you stepped into the line of fire.

You hid injuries, you hid sickness, you pushed through it all. It was terrifying for Alexia as a partner to watch you continuously put yourself on the line and act like it was completely nothing. By the end of your relationship it was getting hard to watch it happen.

Your ankle injury was a result of that, you hadn’t even been the one ton sideline yourself. It had fallen down to Irene catching a glimpse of your purple and black swelled up ankle after a training session and her marching you to the team physio to get it checked out. It wasn’t shocking to Alexia, but it did make her wonder how many time you’d chosen to hide your pain in favour of putting up a brave face and pushing through, in all aspects of your life.

Alexia was worried and yet she felt as though she had no right to be.

She’d let you push her away, knowing that in some way or another it could be hurting not just her but you, realisatically she couldn’t do anything about it. If you didn’t want to be in a relationship with her she couldn’t force you, but a part of her thought she might have let go a little to easy.

For her, you would be the one that got away.

She wasn’t ready to let you get away yet though.

Really, if she thought about it, it was Mapi who had highlighted that you weren’t okay, and that maybe it was time for somebody to reach out to you. Mapi had come to care a lot about you, she’d seen how broken both you and Alexia were after the split, Alexia was still functioning though, you seemed like you were losing energy for life as everyday passed.

Mapi had been the one to suggest that she’d check on you whilst everyone else was gone, Mapi being stuck behind with some minor twinges in her knee, it was more precautionary than anything that she took the weekend off. She was more then happy though to be a good friend and spend some extra time with you if it meant getting to the bottom of whatever had been going on.

Her intentions had been to bring around a fresh meal, her mama’s old tapa recipe that always managed to light up Ingrid’s face. If her tapas earned her a way into your apartment then she was hoping to sit down with you, maybe have a chat, watch whatever football watch was on. Something, she wanted some kind of proof that you were okay, that even though you were going through a rough time that you manage, that at some point you would come out of this funk and you would go back to the old version of yourself. Maybe better, maybe you would unearth some kind of happiness from you situation and you would be better off because of it.

Mapi knew the odds of all of that were drastically low, but she was also the optimist of everything, it was the reason that she was so good at making uncomfortable people feel more settled in the team. She knocked on your front door with a extra bit of pep in her, hope that somehow she was going to resolve all of the underlying issues that everyone had been expressing for weeks now but had been too afraid to unearth. Mapi was certain that her approach might actually help, that instead of being the authoritative figure that Alexia, Irene, Marta and Patri were as your captains. Mapi was here as a friend, nothing more and nothing less and she hoped that would maybe encourage you to open up to her.

Mapi waited at least a minute after her initial knock before knocking again.

Your car had been beside Mapi’s when she’d parked downstairs, so she knew you were home. It wasn’t late, but it also wasn’t early enough that Mapi could rule out the possibility of you being asleep. Alexia had shoved her old key to your apartment into Mapi���s hand before she’d left, there weren’t any instructions, but the pure desperation in Alexia’s eyes was making Mapi feel compelled to use it.

Her third knock on the door was met with more silence.

You were probably sleeping.

There were parts of Mapi crawling with the emerging feeling of anxiety, she just needed to see you. You’d skipped your gym session today, something that was extremely abnormal for you, it had been worrying enough for Mapi, but you not responding to her now was sending her into a full on spiral.

“It’s Mapi, if you could open up for me please chica, I have some food for you.”

Mapi doesn’t even hear furniture creak.

She repeats what she said again, and is met with complete silence.

“Chica, are you in there? Are you awake? Just answer me, you don’t have to open the door.”

Mapi, if she looks really hard, can make out the faintest glow underneath your door, maybe a lamp?

Mapi waits a few more seconds, and sprinkles in some aggressive knocks. She’s met with nothing in response.

She digs around desperately in her pocket for the key, her fingers eventually coming into contact with the weight of the key in the back pocket of her jeans.

She pulls it up to the door knob with regret coursing through her veins, she doesn’t feel good about invading your privacy, but she feels even worse about everything else, and it’s all enough to overshadow her concern for your feelings about being left alone. After all, you might just be asleep.

The key makes a click after Mapi turns it counterclockwise twice, Mapi reaches for the door knob, it’s the final barrier between her and you, and without much hesitation she pushes the knob down and it opens.

Mapi shivers with the frigid breeze that comes at her as she steps into your apartment.

As soon as her foot hits your wooden floor she can tell something is off, she doesn’t know what but she can just feel it.

Mapi walks into your apartment slowly, with a quick scan of your kitchen and living space she is certain the room is empty. She leaves her dish of tapas on the couter of your kitchen and surveys the room before hesitantly making her way into your hallway. The door to your guest room is open, so naturally Mapi looks in there first.

“Chica, I came in to drop off some food, are you home?”

Mapi, whilst she can’t physically see you anywhere, has a weird kind of sense that you are here, she’s just not sure where.

The guest room is completely empty, in fact, mapi is sure that there is dust lying on top of the spare sheets. She can’t remember the last time you mentioned having somebody stay, at the very start of your signing to Barca, occasionally girls from your National team would come and visit during breaks. Mapi remembers that time, she wouldn’t have said you were happy, but you seemed a bit more content. It was best Mapi had seen you before Alexia.

Mapi is fairly familiar with your apartment, between game nights, post game drinks and double dates she’d spent enough time in your apartment to know where everything was.

Your main bathroom was empty, leaving your bedroom and ensuite.

Mapi felt like she’d invaded enough of your privacy, your bedroom might be the over step.

But there was the clawing feeling, the same feeling that she’d gotten when she’d walked into the apartment that something was wrong, and she wasn’t going to be able to sleep tonight without getting to the bottom of it.

So with much apprehension, Mapi walks the rest of the way down the hallway and to the door of your bedroom.

Mapi swears that she has sweat through her shirt, even though your apartment feels colder than the Norwegian winter she’d recently experienced.

Her hands are all sweaty, the same they get before any match, she doesn’t know where her nerves are coming from, she doesn’t have anything to worry about, yet.

Mapi knocks as quietly on your bedroom door as possible, she’s made her mind up that if you are sleeping she’ll leave a note with her tapas and take her leave, she doesn’t need to disturb you.

“Chica, I came here to drop some food off, just make a noise and I’ll leave you.”

Mapi waits for what feels like eternity, and after a long stretch of silence she takes the leap.

She opens the door as quietly as possible, and feels defeated when she spots your complete empty bed.

Everything looks normal, in a weird kind of way. Your sheets are made up, almost pedantically. All the corners tucked in and pillows positioned like they would be in a catalogue.

The only light in the room is the light that is filtering in from your ensuite, underneath the door. It’s bright enough that Mapi can see around the room.

She wants to leave. But she can’t, not without checking.

There is a off chance that you’ve gone on a walk, an activity that definitely was not approved by your physios but she supposed you’d never really obeyed them in the first place.

It’s one last room, your apartment seems so devoid of life that Mapi is confident that it’ll be empty.

She tiptoes across your bedroom, everything about this feels so wrong, like she’s invading somebody’s life that she doesn’t even know anything about.

Mapi knocks on your bathroom door.

“Chica, if you’re in there, just let me know and I’ll leave you be.”

Silence. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not even a squeak.

Mapi’s hand is so sweaty that it nearly slips off of the handle on the door, she doesn’t know why she’s nervous, she doesn’t have any reason to be nervous. Yet it also feels like there are a millon under lying reasons.

Mapi plucks up the courage, because she has to, and twists the knob.

Away games are always a weird mixture of relaxing but also having absolutely no time to yourself.

Alexia’s least favourite part about away games is team bonding. Following the first team dinner of every away trip it’s customary to do some kind of team bonding exercise. She understands that it’s important, but after a long train trip to Madrid the last thing she wants is to spend hours trying to get out of an escape room with no phone and all of the younger girls talking her ear off. What Alexia wants is to get back to the hotel and sleep. Yet she’s stuck in a confined space with girls that she loves but wants nothing more to get away from.

Caro and Keira seem to be in the same mindset as her, the three of them all keeping as far away from the ruckus as possible. After two hours of the madness, Vicky of all people manages to get to the bottom of the puzzle and somehow unlocks the door, Alexia isn’t sure of the logistics of it and she doesn’t really care.

The girls all celebrate as the file out, but there is an overall feeling that everybody is ready to head back to the hotel and go to sleep.

Phones are handed back and Alexia almost pockets hers, to tired to look at whatever messages or instagram notifications she has. But it’s the sea of missed calls that catch her attention.

Alexia’s heart drops.

She’s got dozens of missed calls from Mapi and she knows from the minute she sees her call log that something is wrong.

All Mapi can remember is the amount of blood.

It was so red against your white bathroom tiles.

So much blood. Mapi was certain that there wasn’t that much blood in the human body, and yet it just kept leaking out, even as she pressed your towels to your arm, it kept leaking through.

She vaguely remembers going through her very basic medical training. Checking your pulse, it took a while for her to find it but eventually she does. She doesn’t know if it weak or it’s just her shaking hands that can’t pin your pulse down.

She uses a leftover hair tie on her wrist as a tourniquet, she doesn’t think it’s working but she has nothing else.

Compression.

She vaguely remembers her call with the emergency services, struggling to find words but forcing them out of her mouth because she had to.

The lady on the other side of the phone talks her through it, tells Mapi that she’s doing the right things, she walks Mapi through what to do if you stop breathing. Mapi thinks you are, your chest lifts every so slightly every few seconds, but it’s so subtle Mapi swears she might be imagining it.

The lady tells Mapi that eventually your blood should clot, but Mapi finds it hard to believe. Her hands and shirt are covered in blood, your blood, it’s everywhere, red and thick and it’s overwhelming Mapi. Your bathroom looks like a crime scene, a murder scene, and Mapi supposes it almost is.

When the paramedics show up, Mapi doesn’t know what to do, they’re so methodical. One of them talks to Mapi whilst their partner attends to you, Mapi’s hands are shaking, her hands, covered in your blood. She should have taken that extra medical course that they’d offered all the players at the start of the season, maybe it would have prepared her better. Nothing prepares a person for what Mapi just did though, no amount of medical training or training courses could ever prepare a person for what Mapi just saw.

The paramedic assures Mapi that she did everything right, that you wouldn’t be alive without her, and those words make it all worse. Dead. You could have been dead. The paramedic offers to take Mapi to the hospital with you, but she declines, she needs a minute, she needs to have a second to think about herself. The paramedic tells Mapi the name of the hospital they’ll be taking you and takes her name and number to give to the nurses as your contact.

They whisk you off right in front of Mapi’s eyes.

Your body is white, you look so lifeless.

Once you’re gone, Mapi closes the door to your bathroom, she can’t look in there, not at the raw amount of evidence that you’ve left behind. It’s already all over her body, she doesn’t need to see anymore of it.

She sits down on your tight sheets, and she realises that there is a piece of paper sitting at the edge of your bed, a letter.

Mapi cries when she sees it, she lets it all out.

It’s addressed to Alexia and Mapi doesn’t need to read it to know what it’s intention was, what your intentions were, if it wasn’t already confirmed then this only assures it.

Mapi leaves red finger prints on it, picking it up and collecting some of your clothes from your wardrobe before leaving your apartment.

Alexia clicks on Mapi’s contact with so much fear coursing through her body, she’s praying that it’s not here mami, not when Alexia is away.

“Ale-Alexia, thank god you picked up, gracias a dios.”

Mapi’s voice is quivering, Alexia’s not sure if she’s ever heard her voice like that before.

“Maria, what’s wrong? Why did you call so many times?”

There is a sob on the other end of the line, and Alexia starts to pray, to any god that whatever Mapi is about to tell her isn’t going to be bad, she can’t handle bad news right now.

“She was supposed to be sleeping, I was so sure she was sleeping. There was so much blood, I thought, I didn’t think there was enough blood in a person’s veins but there was so much of it, it just kept leaking out of her.”

Alexia’s heart and stomach are at her feet, she clutches for a wall, a solid form that she can rely on so that she doesn’t collapse.

“Who, Maria, who? What are you talking about, where are you?”

There is another sob, a deep sob, like Mapi’s being tortured.

“Y/n, I went to visist her like you’d asked, an-and she was, I thought she was dead.”

Alexia heart feels like it’s on a rollercoaster, like it’s returned to a normal level for a second, before plummeting even deeper.

“What do you mean Maria, what are you talking about.”

Somebody in the group must have realised Alexia’s discomposure, because she can feel a group of eyes on her, like everybody is trying to figure out what is happening on the other end of the phone.

“She left a letter, she-she I thought she was dead Ale, why would somebody do that to themselves? Why would she want to do that to herself.”

Alexia is aware that Mapi is clearly in some kind of post-traumatic state, that it’s going to be hard to get to the bottom of this but she’s managed to string the details together. From what Mapi’s said, you’re still alive, but it can’t be good, not by how Mapi has made it sound.

“Maria, I need you to listen to me. Where are you? Where is she? What is wrong with her.”

Alexia can hear Mapi trying to take some deep breaths on the other side of the line, somewhere in the crowd Ingrid is pushed forward, looking at Alexia with so much confusion. Mapi doesn’t often have anxiety or panic attacks, but if she were, Ingrid is certain that she would be the first person for Mapi to call, yet she’s received none.

“I-I’m at the hospital with her, she’s been moved to the ICU, I haven’t seen her yet but the nurses told me they had to perform CPR in the ambulance and that she was rushed to surgery when she got here. She’s been stable since but she’s in critical condition.”

Alexia doesn’t know what to do, she wants to be with you.

“Maria, I’m going to hand you off to Ingrid okay, talk to her, let her calm you down. I’m going to talk to the staff and try and figure out a way for me to come home, talk to Ingrid, okay?”

Ingrid looks confused but takes the phone from Alexia regardless, allowing Alexia to walk towards the staff, her face sullen and body hurting from the pressure of all of this.

Mapi thinks you look worse, somehow.

All of the wires and cords and the bags and needles make your body look wrong. Nobody should need so many weird connections, yet considering the state you were in Mapi is oddly comforted by it all, she wants you to be getting as much help as your body needs.

She still got your blood on her, one of the nice nurses had helped her to wash it off her hands and arms, and Mapi had stolen one of your sweatshirts she’d haphazardly grabbed as a replacement for her shirt, but she can still feel it on her body.

She’s been sitting in the same chair since the nurses let her in to your room, it’s next to the window, so when Mapi feels compelled to cry, or can’t handle looking at your body any longer because it gives her a flashback, she looks out the window at the bustling city of Barcelona below her and it oddly comforts her. Life goes on, everyone elses life goes on, but yours almost didn’t.

Her mind goes to dark places thinking about the what if she hadn’t of come to check on you? Mapi knows the answer to that question, even a few minutes later and your body would have been even more lifeless then when Mapi found it, except maybe instead of most of life being drained from you, all of it would have been.

They still don’t know for sure what it’s going to look like when you wake up, Mapi was hardly paying attention when the doctors came to talk to her, they were speaking so many words that Mapi couldn’t even pretend to know the meaning of. She remembers bits and pieces, the parts that she knew she’d have to remember in case Alexia called again and wanted an update.

You’d lost a lot of blood but they were working to try and replenish it, you’d needed nearly 100 stitches all together, the scars were all about 6 inches long and just almost ½ and inch deep. You didn’t hit any major arteries or veins, but you grazed one of them and that was most likely why you bled so much. Your blood might have not clotted because of the antidepressants in your system potentially mixed with the ibuprofen you were taking for your ankle. They don’t know when you are going to wake up but they emphasise you sleeping isn’t a bad thing because you’re body is getting the rest that it needs to repair itself.

Mapi doesn’t understand the measurements or the way medications work, she knows your body needs rest but she also desperately just wants you to wake up. Selfishly, even if it’s just for a second so that she knows that you are okay, so that she can stop blaming herself for killing you. She’s always going to somewhat blame herself for this, but you dying would be the straw that broke the camels back.

Alexia doesn’t think the whole way back to Barcelona, the staff managed to get her on the last flight out of the night, with Ingrid.

They both don’t say a word after Alexia briefs Ingrid on what she learnt from Mapi on the phone, it’s nowhere near enough information and it leaves Alexia’s brain stumbling, she’s so uncertain of everything.

There is a chauffeur waiting for them at the airport which takes them straight to the hospital, Alexia doesn’t even pretend to be flattered when the reception staff immediately know who she is and takes her straight to your room. She has one concern. Everything else is just background noise to her.

Seeing you makes Alexia feel sick, literally, it’s a few seconds before she feels the bile rising. It’s been building for hours now and she rushes into the bathroom adjacent to your room and ungracefully let’s her stomach go directly into the toilet bowl.

Once she’s done and she feels less like her heart is going to fall out of her throat she gets up and puts on a brave face, walking back into your room.

Mapi has tears streaming down her face, Ingrid is trying to talk to her but Alexia can tell that none of it is getting through to her.

“Mapi, what happened?”

Alexia wants to know, she needs to know, she needs to know how you got here.

Mapi is shaking, her whole body, it’s almost scary the way that her body vibrates against the chair she’s sitting in.

“I-I went to check in on her, dios mios, it was so cold, she was-she-.”

Ingrid stops Mapi.

“Alexia, we can do this later, she can’t handle this right now.”

Ingrid looks as terrified as Alexia feels, but her fear is for Mapi, it makes sense, Mapi is the love of her life. Alexia doesn’t think she’s entitled to the same fear, she let you go.

“No-no, she wants to know.”

It’s clear that every word is pulling Mapi further and further apart, but she pushes through.

“I-I just needed to see her, I went through all the rooms until I got to her bathroom.”

She lets out a sob before continuing.

“There was so much blood, it was all coming from her arm, I tried my best, I tried my best.”

Mapi sobs again, this time it’s so deep and guttural that Alexia is so horrified about what is to come.

“I tried to stop it. She was supposed to be sleeping, I thought she was just sleeping. She was unconscious, blood everywhere, and it just kept coming, it wouldn’t stop. I tried my best.”

Ingrid is murmuring words into Mapi’s ear, Alexia doesn’t know what to say, she actually can’t think of a single word to say.

“I called the ambulance, but she coded in the ambulance, they had to give her so many stitches, so much blood.”

Mapi keeps repeating the same words, over and over again, like it’s a mantra.

Alexia needs to stop it, for her bestfriends sake.

She walks to the otherside of the room, gently pushing Ingrid to the side so she can squat down in front of Mapi.

“Maria look at me. You did your best, you saved her life. You are no more to blame for this then anybody else is. You did so well, she’s alive because of you, she is breathing and sitting in front of us because of you. You did that.”

Mapi doesn’t look like she believes Alexia, but it’s a reprieve from whatever trance she was in.

“How about you and Ingrid go and get something to eat, I’ll stay here with her, if anything happens I’ll call you, okay?”

Mapi looks apprehensive to get up, but Alexia watches Ingrid give her a look and it’s the first time since Alexia’s walked into this room that she sees a little bit of normality return to Mapi’s face.

“Sh-she left you a letter. I think you should read it.”

Mapi pushes it into Alexia’s hands like it’s poisonous.

“Thank you Mapi, I will, go and take a break.”

Alexia presses a kiss to Mapi’s hand, before moving to allow Ingrid to help her up. Mapi is uneasy on her feet and for a second Alexia thinks she might collapse or vomit. She eventually finds her footing though and follows Ingrid out of the room.

Alexia looks down at the letter.

It’s got dried blood finger prints on it, she presumes from Mapi, it secures all of this in some weird way. This is all actually happening.

Alexia takes her time opening it, this is tangible evidence of all of this and a part of Alexia wants nothing more then for it to disappear, so she can pretend none of this has happened.

She wasn’t even there for it, she can’t imagine what Mapi went through, she already feels like every part of her has been stripped away with this.

She feels like she’s an imposter in this all, she doesn’t know what to do.

You’ve never expressed to her anything about family or parents, she doesn’t think it would be right to call them without your permission. She wants to call her own mami but that feels a bit silly, although she knows somehow her mami would give her all the right advice. She doesn’t want to talk about any of it though, it feels wrong. This is such a personal issue, she doesn’t even think she should know about it, she doesn’t have any right considering that Alexia could have very well contributed to this whole issue.

The letter is white, off white possibly, it’s hard to tell with the harsh fluorescent lighting.

The marks that would have been bright red at some stage have faded to a dull reddish brown, it’s imprinted deep into the paper.

Alexia flips it over, gently opening the seal with her fingernail and letting the flap open up.

The paper inside is the same colour, except even though she can only see the flip side it’s clear that there is black scrawl all over it.

Alexia could make it disappear, act like she read it, it would make it all so much easier, it would save her a lot of emotions that she really doesn’t feel prepared to feel. But she doesn’t get to make that decision, she needs to read this, for you and for her.

Dear Alexia,

If you’re reading this then chances are I’m already gone, if I’m not then something went wrong and for that I’m sorry. I don’t want you to think that any of this was about you, or that you or anybody else was responsible. I made this decision, I’ve been thinking about this long before you came and I would have spent everyday thinking about it, no action or intervention would have changed that.

I don’t know how to explain it, but life is different for me. I don’t experience things the same way, I don’t get happy when I spend time with friends, I don’t get happy when it’s sunny outside. I’ve tried it all, I’ve tried to make it work, tried to live life in my body. I think a part of me was always separate though, and as much as I’ve tried to make it work there is no point in trying to fix something that is always going to be broken.

Being with you was the first time that my brain felt quiet, that I kind of felt the experience of happiness that everyone else feels. You made it all better, everything with you felt better, it felt normal. All I ever wanted was to be a normal person, and you made me feel like that. It’s not fair of me to be saying that, you deserved better then me, it wasn’t fair for me to burden you with all of this shit. Fucked up is never not fucked up, you can’t uncrumple a crumpled piece of paper, it will always be creased. I want you to know that I didn’t do this to you, i did this for you. It wasn’t fair weighing you down, I know it wasn’t easy for you when we broke up, you deserve to focus on football. You deserve to have a good life, you deserve to be free. I don’t want you to feel bad, I don’t want you to feel like you’re responsible. Live your life, be happy, for me, experience it all, because I couldn’t.

I’m not myself anymore, although I don’t think I ever was myself. It always kind of feels like i’ve been different people in my own body, and this time i couldn’t handle it. I don’t want to feel devoid anymore, I want to be free. My identity has always been identified as being a good footballer, a great footballer, and I don’t even think I can say that I am that anymore. I am nothing, want to be nothing.

I’m sorry I never loved you back in the same way, I’m sorry I never reciprocated the endless graciousness and love tha you gave me. The smiles, the effort, the constant love, it was wasted on me and my biggest regret in life will be letting you waste it on me. It wasn’t fair, it’ll never be fair, because I loved you back and that perhaps was the most selfish act I’ve ever committed.

I’m sorry, there aren’t enough words that I could use to tell you just how sorry I am. I’m sorry that I burdened you with me, I’m sorry that I let myself be cared for by you, I’m sorry that you have to read this.

I’m sorry.

There wouldn’t have ever been anything I could have done to repair it, I didn’t want to live knowing that I would forever be in debt to you for this. I hope that eventually you will find peace in this, that some good will finally come of me.

Goodbye.

There are tears all over the page by the time Alexia gets to the bottom of the letter, she actually can’t comprehend what she’s just read, she swears that her mind must be playing tricks on her. Why would you think all of those things? What made you think all of those things?

Alexia feels sick again.

Did she make you feel that way? Did she make you feel like you weren’t deserving of living?

There are so many questions circulating her brain, and she doesn’t have a answer for a single one of them, because she doesn’t know. Suicide was your only option, one that could have been very permanent, it makes Alexia’s head swim. You believed that your only option to make it all stop was death. You found a permanent solution to something that Alexia’s considers a potentially temporary situation, had you reached out, had you tried to find help. She can’t criticise you, she can’t even begin to comprehend how hard it would be living as you have, and then having to try and talk to somebody else about that. A part of her wishes you had though, because maybe it would have saved her beind here.

Your body is the exact same it was the last time Alexia looked at you, but for some reason you feel different.

Alexia reaches out for your hand, it’s the arm that’s not covered in bandages. Your hands are cold, but she tries to ignore it. She focuses on the feeling of movement underneath her own hand, it’s the only real tangible proof she has that you are here with her, that you are alive.

Sure there is a beeping heart monitor, and other signs, but she just wants to feel you.

She holds your hand, because she swears that she’ll slip away. Alexia doesn’t know what to do, she doesn’t know how to help you but she promises herself that she’s going to be here, that she isn’t ever going to let you experience life the same way that you did without her being there for you.

—————————————————————

thoughts appreciated …. part 2?

another reminder that if you ever need anybody to talk to i am here, your life is worth living, you are worth it all. <3

[inkskinned]

you're grabbing lunch with a nice man and he gives you that strange grimace-smile that's popular right now; an almost sardonic "twist" of his mouth while he looks literally down on you. it looks like he practiced the move as he leans back, arms folded. he just finished reciting the details of NFTs to you and explaining Oppenheimer even though he only watched a youtube about it and hasn't actually seen it. you are at the bottom of your wine glass.

you ask the man across from you if he has siblings, desperately looking for a topic. literally anything else.

he says i don't like small talk. and then he smiles again, watching you.

a few years ago, you probably would have said you're above celebrity gossip, but honestly, you've been kind of enjoying the dumb shit of it these days. with the rest of the earth burning, there's something familiar and banal about dragging ariana grande through the mud. you think about jeanette mccurdy, who has often times gently warned the world she's not as nice as she appears. you liked i'm glad my mom died but it made you cry a lot.

he doesn't like small talk, figure out something to say.

you want to talk about responsibility, and how ariana grande is only like 6 days older than you are - which means she just turned 30 and still dresses and acts like a 13 year old, but like sexy. there's something in there about the whole thing - about insecurity, and never growing up, and being sexualized from a young age.

people have been saying that gay people are groomers. like, that's something that's come back into the public. you have even said yourself that it's just ... easier to date men sometimes. you would identify as whatever the opposite of "heteroflexible" is, but here you are again, across from a man. you like every woman, and 3 people on tv. and not this guy. but you're trying. your mother is worried about you. she thinks it's not okay you're single. and honestly this guy was better before you met, back when you were just texting.

wait, shit. are you doing the same thing as ariana grande? are you looking for male validation in order to appease some internalized promise of heteronormativity? do you conform to the idea that your happiness must result in heterosexuality? do you believe that you can resolve your internal loneliness by being accepted into the patriarchy? is there a reason dating men is easier? why are you so scared of fucking it up with women? why don't you reach out to more of them? you have a good sense of humor and a big ol' brain, you could have done a better job at online dating.

also. jesus christ. why can't you just get a drink with somebody without your internal feminism meter pinging. although - in your favor (and judgement aside) in the case of your ariana grande deposition: you have been in enough therapy you probably wouldn't date anyone who had just broken up with their wife of many years (and who has a young child). you'd be like - maybe take some personal time before you begin this journey. like, grande has been on broadway, you'd think she would have heard of the plot of hamlet.

he leans forward and taps two fingers to the table. "i'm not, like an andrew tate guy," he's saying, "but i do think partnership is about two people knowing their place. i like order."

you knew it was going to be hard. being non-straight in any particular way is like, always hard. these days you kind of like answering the question what's your sexuality? with a shrug and a smile - it's fine - is your most common response. like they asked you how your life is going and not to reveal your identity. you like not being straight. you like kissing girls. some days you know you're into men, and sometimes you're sitting across from a man, and you're thinking about the power of compulsory heterosexuality. are you into men, or are you just into the safety that comes from being seen with them? after all, everyone knows you're failing in life unless you have a husband. it almost feels like a gradebook - people see "straight married" as being "all A's", and anything else even vaguely noncompliant as being ... like you dropped out of the school system. you cannot just ignore years of that kind of conditioning, of course you like attention from men.

"so let's talk boundaries." he orders more wine for you, gesturing with one hand like he's rousing an orchestra. sir, this is a fucking chain restaurant. "I am not gonna date someone who still has male friends. also, i don't care about your little friends, i care about me. whatever stupid girls night things - those are lower priority. if i want you there, you're there."

he wasn't like this over text, right? you wouldn't have been even in the building if he was like this. you squint at him. in another version of yourself, you'd be running. you'd just get up and go. that's what happens on the internet - people get annoyed, and they just leave. you are locked in place, almost frozen. you need to go to the bathroom and text someone to call you so you have an excuse, like it's rude to just-leave. like he already kind of owns you. rudeness implies a power paradigm, though. see, even your social anxiety allows the patriarchy to get to you.

you take a sip of the new glass of wine. maybe this will be a funny story. maybe you can write about it on your blog. maybe you can meet ariana grande and ask her if she just maybe needs to take some time to sit and think about her happiness and how she measures her own success.

is this settling down? is this all that's left in your dating pool? just accepting that someone will eventually love you, and you have to stop being picky about who "makes" you a wife?

you look down to your hand, clutching the knife.

[sasukeless]

wild theory but guys i think sasuke doesn’t like women

[wearenemies]

patrick + girlfob wips i will likely never finish <3

[spirit-lanterns]

goddamn feixiao looks so handsome.......... the look over her shoulder...... her look wnet straight to my pussy i want her to breed me fill me up with her pups....... 👉👈

Feixiao so handsome that just one look from her can make a girl pregnant 🫣

I guess her form of “protection” would be sunglasses to cover her eyes? Though, just Feixiao’s entire appearance is enough to get you pregnant. Her smile, her body, her muscles. I wouldn’t be surprised if she were capable of breeding you by just existing in the same room as you 😵‍💫😵‍💫

[emily-mooon]

Scott Pilgrim Characters as Text Posts but they’re mostly of Stacey and Neil cause I’m obsessed with them :]

[the-physicality]

thinking this labor day about all the athletes in women's sports who didn't have a stable league, who were only making decent money from a spot on their national team, who had to fight to get even a fraction of what they deserve. who spent their prime without a club league or the infrastructure to propel the sport. who came of age after title 9 in the usa [forcing schools to fund women/girls’ sports], the ones who fought for cbas and are only seeing big change at the end of their careers or after their careers concluded. who didn't have the media attention before, but are now showing just how much they can sell out stadiums and arenas. the players who played year round because overseas teams paid athletes what they were worth. athletes who endured and reported harassment but the league never took appropriate action. athletes who never had the media attention or ability to monetize their talent but who had careers that were just as impressive as the stars of today. who did it without the help of the science, technology, and medicine we have today. who set records with less support and fewer games in a season, which will be broken by kids who have had personal trainers since high school. athletes who played great games that are no long available to view, their talent no longer archived and accessible for young or new fans. athletes who still don't have a league or are just getting one in 2024. athletes who took it upon themselves to create change for which they will never reap the full rewards.

[joseigamer]

Patalliro! is fascinating to me because of stuff like this. It's unapologetically gay - even within its anime which aired during primetime hours in 1982 - in a way that many later BL manga would never be, like the ones from the early 2000s which would never dare to call their characters actual homosexuals. Patalliro has actually aged quite well in this regard, there's something comforting about how campy it is.

[labelleizzy]

You have to understand what is happening on a mythic level, okay? What we have here is a relatively rare phenomenon: advance warning of an imposed culture change. It is critical to understand what the people who are going to be in charge believe to be true.

As you read this, remember mighty Achilles had a heel.

Everyone has a heroic self, and among the leadermen a coming they are strong and smart and capable; unafraid and fearless, they know better than anyone else how things should be done. The heroic challenge - they have been unjustly prevented from setting things right by a thorny poison wall. Through heroic exertion - generally the use of violence, trickery, and expendable companions - victory is achieved. The wall is severed and the hero prevails. The hero is rewarded with buxom adoration, many children, some degree of material success and the regard of the lesser, non-heroic people.

For thorny poison wall, understand laws, regulation, and the acknowledgement of universal human rights.

Within the myth, the hero in confidently invincible. Outside of the myth, confidence does not guarantee success. This can be quite a shock to the system. It is important to push back. The hero may still kill their opponents, but eventually someone will get him. Even immortals die from time to time; it's the rebirth thing that saves their ass.

Why is it so important to this hero to control fertility is because on a very deep primal level they understand it's their only route to divinity. As much as they value innovative accomplishment - and heroes by definition are surrounded by novelty, they are always the first in a strange land - they cannot through their own efforts ascend to being any greater than they are. Women, specifically via the provision of children, make heroes into better men, at a minimum, and via sufficiently obedient behaviors, into the closest to Godhood as they're going to get.

When you say but that's gender essentialism, let me clarify that that's exactly the point. The existential threat inherent in independent women is the disruption of the heroic path to divinity. They may say it is a mission from God, but in fact, it is a mission to be God.

And how do we defeat would be Gods? We don't believe in them. We certainly don't treat them with the fear and dread they desire. There is no respect or veneration due. That thorny, poison wall will hold. They that hold it may bleed, but the wall will hold. It may get cut but as long as one thorn remains, it will grow back. Regulations and laws are written in blood. They are sacred words in their own way. But they must, like all magic words, be used, guarded, and protected.

You may not live long, with what's coming. But in myth, you live forever. Their way of being a hero is not the only way. And somebody has to save our ass.

If you were waiting on a call, this is it.

(author requests anonymity)

[scrawnytreedemon]

Just a girl and her hog, trying to save their dying world.

[hor3nee]

Oct Fem!Char Recs

Female RE Characters x Reader fics I read & loved this October. Go check out these fics!

Ada Wong

IN SICKNESS & IN HEALTH！• Ada Wong/Reader in which a certain mercenary takes care of you while you're sick. @wo8ngs RN: I read this while I had a flu and omg yeah it made me feel so much better. Was like giggling and shit. Final hc made me UGH I loved the very mild angst.

CHERRY • Ada Wong/Reader (18+) You'll take it like a good dog, won't you? @homicidal-slvt RN: She calls Reader good dog and that rewired my brain tbh.

Honey! It's a Murder Case. • Ada Wong/Reader after changing town, you, a detective, arrive on the crime scene after dead man's wife called, a woman in the red that seemingly was already waiting for you. @clitorphosis RN: Seriously beautiful and I wanted to tear open my skull reading it + doomed yuri bless.

Ashley Graham

I’LL DO IT ! • Ashley Graham/Reader ft. Leon (18+) You’re drunk, Ashley’s drunk. He’s pretty fucking sober. She likes him. Ashley likes him a lot, and he wishes she didn’t. @wokelander RN: I will kill for og Ashley biggest defender + the epileptic gf mention made me holler so hard loved.

Making Out with the President's Daughter • Ashley Graham/Reader Ashley wants to have a makeout session with you. That's it. @/MasterOfMemez96 RN: It's like under 500 words, short and really sweet!! And I'm really picky with fluff.

Hey, Scene Slut • Ashley Graham/Reader (18+) “You like when I fuck you like this? Sitting here all pretty for me while I cut you open?” You felt like she could say anything to you and she’d still be an angel in your eyes. @/zh0mb13affa1rz RN: Being so honest I read for the gore stayed for the smut and may have discovered something new about myself.

Claire Redfield

communion • Claire Redfield/Reader (18+) It’s over, and she’s back at your place the following weekend. @delphi-shield RN: It's like porn, right? But art. Like art porn. Like smut laced with gods word and thrown onto tumblr, should be the modern bible. God-teir read.

eat that girl for lunch • Claire Redfield/Reader (18+) she dances on my tongue, tastes like she might be the one (or every college girl has that “phase”) @thisfanisgonesorry RN: It's in 1st person. Also shit made me tweak heart breaking damn. Loved.

Ingrid Hunnigan

Brat • Ingrid Hunnigan/Reader (18+) Getting taught a lesson in obedience by your beloved girlfriend. @homicidal-slvt RN: No words just eating their smut and becoming increasingly depraved reading their stuff also the first ever Hunnigan/Reader I've found so thank fuck for that.

[bitchfitch]

idk maybe it's because I see all art as various fields of craft work, ie skills composed of a series of linear steps that can be taken to produce certain results, but it irks me when people lose their shit over really basic pieces simply because the end result was able to produce a realistic image. like. especially since I've noticed it shows up a Lot more often in reference to categories of art dominated by women.

like, it's great y'all are gaining a respect for quilting and fiber work, but maybe loudly declaring that you either don't see or don't care about the immense display of skill in pieces unless they conform to what's mildly difficult in the one(1) genre of art you have deemed respectable isn't like. cool.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Rick McKee, Augusta Chronicle

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 11, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Nov 12, 2024

The day after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, Afghanistan’s Taliban offered its congratulations to the American people for “not handing leadership of their great country to a woman.” 

Taliban leaders expressed optimism that Trump’s election would enable a new chapter in the history of U.S-Taliban relations. They noted that it was Trump who suggested a new international order when he inked the February 29, 2020, Doha Agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban. That deal cut out the Afghan government and committed the U.S. to leave Afghanistan by May 2021, closing five military bases and ending economic sanctions on the Taliban. This paved the way for the U.S. evacuation of the country in August 2021 and the return of the Taliban to power. 

The Taliban prohibits girls’ education past the sixth grade and recently banned the sound of women’s voices outside their homes.

In Russia, Russian thinker Alexander Dugin explained the dramatic global impact of Trump’s win. “We have won,” Dugin said. “The world will be never ever like before. Globalists have lost their final combat.” Dugin has made his reputation on his calls for an “anti-American revolution” and a new Russian empire built on “the rejection of [alliances of democratic nations surrounding the Atlantic], strategic control of the United States, and the rejection of the supremacy of economic, liberal market values,” as well as reestablishing traditional family structures with strict gender roles. 

Maxim Trudolyubov of the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan foreign affairs think tank, suggested Friday that Putin’s long-term goal of weakening the U.S. has made him more interested in dividing Americans than in any one candidate. 

Indeed, rather than backing Trump wholeheartedly, Russian president Vladimir Putin has been undercutting him. He did not comment on Trump’s election until Thursday, when he said that the power of liberal democracies over world affairs is “irrevocably disappearing.” Although Ellen Nakashima, John Hudson, and Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post reported that Trump and Putin had spoken on Thursday, Putin denied such a call as “pure fiction.”

Exacerbating America’s internal divisions and demonstrating dominance over both the U.S. and Trump might explain why after Trump became president-elect, laughing Russian media figures showed viewers nude pictures of Trump’s third wife, Melania, taken during her modeling career.

In an interview, Putin’s presidential aide Nikolay Patrushev said today: "To achieve success in the election, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. As a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfill them." Meanwhile, U.S. and Ukrainian officials report that Russia has massed 50,000 soldiers, including North Korean soldiers, to reclaim territory in the Kursk region of Russia taken this year by Ukrainian forces. 

Trump claims to have talked to about seventy world leaders since his reelection but has declined to go through the usual channels of the State Department. This illustrates his determination to reorganize the federal government around himself rather than its normal operations but leaves him—and the United States—vulnerable to misstatements and misunderstandings.

The domestic effects of Trump’s victory also reveal confusion, both within the Republican Party and within national politics. Voters elected Trump and his running mate, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, but it’s hard to miss that billionaire Elon Musk, who backed Trump’s 2024 campaign financially, seems to be “Trump’s shadow vice-president,” as Nick Robins-Early of The Guardian put it. Sources told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that Musk has been a constant presence at Mar-a-Lago since the election, sitting in on phone calls with foreign leaders and weighing in on staffing decisions. Yesterday at Mar-a-Lago, Musk met with the chief executive officer of the right-wing media channel Newsmax.

Exactly who is in control of the party is unclear, and in the short term that question is playing out over the Senate’s choice of a successor to minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). In the new Congress, this Republican leader will become Senate majority leader, thereby gaining the power to control the Senate calendar and decide which bills get taken up and which do not. 

Trump controls the majority of Republicans in the House, but he did not control Senate Republicans when McConnell led them. Now he wants to put Florida senator Rick Scott into the leadership role, but Republicans aligned with McConnell and the pre-2016 party want John Thune (R-SD) or John Cornyn (R-TX). There are major struggles taking place over the choice. Today Musk posted on social media his support for Scott. Other MAGA leaders fell in line, with media figure Benny Johnson—recently revealed to be on Russia’s payroll—urging his followers to target senators backing Thune or Cornyn.

Rachael Bade and Eugene Daniels of Politico Playbook suggested that this pressure would backfire, especially since many senators dislike Scott for his unsuccessful leadership of the National Republican Senatorial Committee that works to elect Republicans to the Senate. 

Trump has also tried to sideline senators by demanding they abandon one of their key constitutional roles: that of advice and consent to a president’s appointment of top administration figures. Although Republicans will command a majority in the Senate, Trump is evidently concerned he cannot get some of his appointees through, so has demanded that Republicans agree to let him make recess appointments without going through the usual process of constitutionally mandated advice and consent.

Trump has also demanded that Republicans stop Democrats from making any judicial appointments in the next months, although Republicans continued to approve his nominees after voters elected President Joe Biden in 2020. Indeed, Judge Aileen Cannon, who let Trump off the hook for his retention of classified documents, was approved after Trump had lost the election.

All this jockeying comes amid the fact that while Trump is claiming a mandate from his election, in fact the vote was anything but a landslide. While votes are still being counted, Trump seems to have won by fewer than two percentage points in a cycle where incumbents across the globe lost. This appears to be the smallest popular vote margin for a winning candidate since Richard Nixon won in 1968.

While voters elected Trump, they also backed Democratic policies. In seven states, voters enshrined abortion rights in their constitutions. Two Republican-dominated states raised their minimum wage to $15 an hour; three enshrined mandated paid leave. In exit polls last week, sixty-five percent of voters said they want abortion to remain legal, and fifty-six percent said they want undocumented immigrants to have a chance to apply for legal status.

The gap between what Trump has promised MAGA supporters and what voters want is creating confusion in national politics. How can Trump deliver the national abortion ban MAGAs want when sixty-five percent of voters want abortion rights? How can he deport all undocumented immigrants, including those who have been here for decades and integrated into their communities, while his own voters say they want undocumented immigrants to have a path to citizenship? 

Trump’s people have repeatedly expressed their opinion that Trump was stopped from putting the full MAGA agenda into place because he did not move quickly enough in his first term. They have vowed they will not make that mistake again. But the fast imposition of their extremist policies runs the risk of alienating the more moderate voters who just put them in power.

In September, as the Taliban enforced new rules on women in Afghanistan, they also began to target Afghan men. New laws mandated that men stop wearing western jeans, stop cutting their hair and beards in western ways, and stop looking at women other than their wives or female relatives. Religious morality officers are knocking on the doors of those who haven’t recently attended mosque to remind them they can be tried and sentenced for repeated nonattendance, and government employees are afraid they’ll be fired if they don’t grow their beards. According to Rick Noack of the Washington Post, such restrictions surprised men, who were accustomed to enjoying power in their society. Some have been wondering if they should have spoken up to defend the freedoms of their wives and daughters.

One man who had supported the Taliban said he now feels bullied. “We all are practicing Muslims and know what is mandatory or not. But it’s unacceptable to use force on us,” he said. Speaking on the condition of anonymity because he feared drawing the attention of the regime, another man from Kabul said: “If men had raised their voices, we might also be in a different situation now.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[crushedsweets]

I got first place in my event . ^_^

[paper-rips]

another tgck post cause i have brain worms and apparently finishing term exams makes your thoughts Extra Queer